Interesting crap you've inadvertently learned...

What are some interesting things that you've learned in class that make you go hmm?

In my psych class we learned that a toddler cannot make simple comparisons if one is deformed...i.e, fill a tall skinny glass with milk, and fill a much shorter but fatter glass with milk, and even if its completely obvious that the shorter glass has more milk, the toddler would still pick the tall one just because the milk level is higher. Another example would be taking 5 pennies, and lining them up, then taking another 5 pennies, and lining them up as well, but spaced out. If you ask a young child which has more, they will pick the spaced out group, just because it looks bigger.

Adding salt to boiling water when cooking pasta doesn't make the water boil measurably hotter.

It seems like most people already knew this, yet it took Physical Chemistry for me to find out.

lowers the boiling point. more stuff in the solution = water is less dense comparatively = lower boiling point. probably takes a hell of a lot of salt to actually do anything, though. learned that recently as well.

also, EVERYTHING you wanted to not learn and write off as being magic is either quantum mechanics or calc. E = mc^2? taylor series expansion (1st 2 terms, anyway). area of a triangle? definite integral. why the sky is blue? quantum.

also, EVERYTHING you wanted to not learn and write off as being magic is either quantum mechanics or calc. E = mc^2? taylor series expansion (1st 2 terms, anyway). area of a triangle? definite integral. why the sky is blue? quantum.

lowers the boiling point. more stuff in the solution = water is less dense comparatively = lower boiling point. probably takes a hell of a lot of salt to actually do anything, though. learned that recently as well.

Heh, well, whoever taught you that is wrong. Other than positive azeotropic mixtures (such as 96% EtOH / H2O) (volatile), I'm fairly certain that any solute will elevate the boiling point. I'm not quite sure how density has anything to do with it.

-People who have had an amputation can still feel pain in their missing limbs. It's a phenomenon known as "phantom pain"
-How we see relies heavily on steriochemistry of the organic molecule rodopsin
-Calculus can be used to find a person's heart rate and blood pressure
-How to take 1667 one dollar bills and turn it into 50 mg of cocaine(I'll actually be trying this over the summer)
-How to make Trinitrotoluene
-How to make a homemade nuclear bomb
-Why carbon monoxide is poisonous

and why Africa probably wont succeed for a very long time. Just dependent on the native crops and animals

I learned that it is the imperialistic nations that caused Africa to turn out the way it is because the people didn't learn how to develop on their own. The colonists built all of this infrastructure and stopped maintaining it or took it when they exhausted the resources and left. They set up boarders which forced rival tribes to try and coexist, and now we have genocide.

Oh, another really interesting thing i learned is that Brown university was established with proceeds from slave trade. The Brown family were some of the most prosperous slave traders in the country. Kind of weird because they brought the slaves into the country via Providence, which is north of the mason dixon line. My friend used to be a cop at the rhode island school of design, and in one of their buildings (a building formerly owned by Brown) had shackles attached to the basement walls for detaining slaves.

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